The use of specially constructed rooms and environments to demonstrate optical and perceptual illusions is known in the art. There are a number of attractions that use forced perspective techniques to make an object or person appear farther, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. These environments fool human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera. A disadvantage of such environments is that they are often “monostable”, that is, the desired visual effect is only perceived from a single location or a narrow range of adjacent locations. Another disadvantage is a loss of effectiveness when a user has observed the environment from a point that reveals the trick, a return to the monostable point of observation lacks the impact of the original viewing.
Another disadvantage of prior art optical and perceptual illusion environments is the lack of interactivity among participants, particularly among third party visitors. In some cases, employees or actors in an installation are required to provide a certain kind of interactivity with the environment, but it is often desired for lay users of an installation to be able to enjoy features and interactivity among themselves, without guided help.
One type of effect is a reorientation of horizontal, vertical, and level surface perception of a viewer/user. Certain effects have been reported in Howard, I. P. and Childerson, L. (1994) The Contribution Of Motion, The Visual Frame, And The Visual Polarity To Sensations Of Body Tilt. Perception, 23, 753-762; Howard, I. P., Hu, G., Saxe, R. and Zacher, J. E. (2005) Visual Orientation In A Mirror World Tilted 90 Degrees. Perception, 34, 7-15; and Howard, I. P. and Hu, G. (2001) Visually Induced Reorientation Illusions. Perception, 30, 583-600. These prior art approaches require the use of a mirror or some other optical device for operation. Other approaches have been described in Hudson, T. E., Li, W. X. and Matin, L. (2000) Independent Mechanisms Produce Visually Perceived Eye Level (VPEL) And Perceived Visual Pitch (PVP). Vision Research, 2605-2619; Matin, L. and Li, W. X. (1995) Multimodal Basis For Egocentric Spatial Localization And Orientation. Journal Of Vestibular Research-Equilibrium & Orientation, 5, 499-518; and Matin, L. and Li, W. X. (1992) Mislocalizations Of Visual Elevation And Visual Vertial Induced By Visual Pitch--The Great-Circle Model. Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences 656, 242-265. These manipulations have mainly focused on a limited visual cues (such as bars) and the effects reported been relatively minor.
Another effect is “vection”, namely the implied sense of motion of a stationary user based on the actual motion of other objects which is described in Fischer, M. H. & Kornmuller, A. E. (1930) Optkinetish Ausgeloste Bewegungswahrnehmungen Und Optkinetisher Nystagmus. Journal fur Psycholige and Neurologie (Leipzig), 41, 273-308.
A third prior art effect is motion induced blindness discussed in Bonneh, Y S, Cooperman, A. and Sagi, D. (2001) Motion-Induced Blindness In Normal Observers. Nature, 411, 798-801.
These techniques have been limited to small objects in scope and have not proven to be applicable in tandem and at a human scale.